Indonesian mine strikes gold with the Volvo Excavator EC950E

Since winning a tender in 2015 to handle operations at the Toka Tindung gold mine in Manado, North Sulawesi, mining contractor PT Samudera Mulia Abadi (SMA) has experienced that Volvo equipment not only delivers but surpasses productivity requirements.
In the past year, SMA has chosen Volvo as exclusive supplier of construction equipment to the Manado gold mine and this has made significant impact on productivity.

Extraordinary improvement
Inspired by the success, SMA this year brought the first two units of the EC950E excavator to Indonesia. Volvo´s new heavyweighter soon proved to be an extremely competitive machine and capable of delivering extraordinary productivity improvements.

“Since we introduced the Volvo Crawler Excavator EC950E, our fleet productivity has gone up by 25 to 30 percent,” says Ozgur Zor, mine planning and production manager at PT Meares Soputan Mining (MSM). “We have been quite excited by the EC950E’s performance onsite.”

MSM is part of PT Archi Indonesia, which has a 100% stake in Toka Tindung Project, the group which owns the mine. Today, SMA has over 60 Volvo machines working for MSM on the Toka Tindung site, and the EC950E units are not the only big machines. There are also six 75-ton rated EC750D excavators plus more than 50 large articulated haulers – a mix of A40F and A45G units.

Going for gold
Gold mining in Toka Tindung, due to hard surfaces and undulating terrain, places extreme demands on machinery. As the concession owner, MSM expects premium levels of sustainable productivity and uptime. As such, SMA opted for Gold Customer Support Agreement (CSA) for its Volvo machines, guaranteeing pre-eminent maintenance and parts availability.

With the Gold CSA service agreement, technicians not only provide regular, scheduled maintenance and inspections, but are also on standby to provide immediate onsite support if needed. PT Intraco Penta Prima Servis (IPPS), Volvo CE´s distribution partner for the Sulawesi region, provides much of the local support.

“Our relationship with IPPS is very good. The company takes care of all our Volvo machines so we don’t have to worry about them,” notes Willson Sastroamijoyo, commissioner at SMA.

Having highly-productive machines with excellent reliability and industry-leading aftermarket support is a successful formula, as Ozgur Zor notes.

Big achievement
“Volvo’s aftermarket is very responsive. The significant number of spare parts onsite really helps us to reduce downtime,” he said. “After we changed the entire fleet exclusively to Volvo, efficiency has increased and fuel consumption and costs have gone down significantly. That has been a big achievement.”

The satisfaction of both Willson Sastroamijoyo and Ozgur Zor is a result of long-term investment from IPPS and Volvo. Both companies began discussing equipment needs with SMA several years ago – long before the first units were ordered. Today, SMA continues to be impressed with the performance and support it gets from its Volvo machines and discussions are underway to bring the next wave of machines to the Toka Tindung site.